Little Grand snatched it, read it over once, twice, thrice, then drooped his head, with a burning color in his face, and was silent.
The "knowing hand" was done!
We were both of us uncommonly quiet for ten minutes, neither of us liked to be the first to give in.
At last Little Grand looked up and held out his hand, no more nonsense about him now.
"Simon, you and I have been two great fools; we can't chaff one another. She's a cursed actress, and—let's make it up, old boy."
We made it up accordingly—when Little Grand was not conceited he was a very jolly fellow—and then I gave him my whole key to the mysteries, intricacies, and charms of our Casa di Fiori. We could not chaff one another, but poor Little Grand was pitiably sore then, and for long afterwards. He, the "old bird," the cool hand, the sharp one of Ours, to have been done brown, to be the joke of the mess, the laugh of all the men, down to the weest drummer-boy! Poor Little Grand! He was too done up to swagger, too thoroughly angry with himself to swear at anybody else. He only whispered to me, "Why the dickens could she want you and me to meet our selves?"
"To give us a finishing hoax, I suppose," I suggested.
Little Grand drew his cap over his eyes, and hung his head down in abject humiliation.
"I suppose so. What fools we have been, Simon! And, I say, I've borrowed three hundred of old Miraflores, and it's all gone up at that devilish Casa; and how I shall get it from the governor, Heaven knows, for I don't."
"I'm in the same pickle, Grand," I groaned. "I've given that old rascal notes of hand for two hundred pounds, and, if it don't drop from the clouds, I shall never pay it. Oh, I say, Grand, love comes deucedly expensive."